Nowadays, motorcars have become a necessity of everyday human life and industrial activity. Likewise, the number of registered vehicles has increased rapidly in recent years and the number of scrapped vehicles has increased gradually accordingly. Scrapped vehicles, however, have low economic value-added due to completion of their life span and since scrapped vehicles are complicated products made of many parts, a pretreatment is essential for reuse. However, since the current pretreatment is carried out mostly by hand, the treatment cost is high. Furthermore, the used parts have a short product life cycle, therefore a problem exists that the used parts can be reused only within a restricted extent. On the average, about 75% of an entire weight of a scrapped vehicle is reused. Seeing that the motorcars are large-sized durable consumer goods made of various materials, the reuse ratio is good in comparison with other consumer goods. However, most of the reused materials are irons and nonferrous metals, and the rest 25% is buried as ASR.
Generally, the dismantling process of scrapped vehicle can be divided into a process of reclaiming and selling the used parts and a process of shredding the remaining scrapped vehicle. Infrastructure for dismantling the scrapped vehicle is constructed comparatively well in Japan and European countries having small territories. In the case of Germany, about 3,000˜4,000 relevant enterprises perform the dismantling process of scrapped vehicle. However, in Korea, since it is not yet arrived at the number of scrapped vehicles (more than one million) which has a sufficient economic value, the infrastructure for dismantling scrapped vehicle is inadequate. Further, since the reuse of used parts are restricted by automobile management law, the relevant enterprises can not be a main supplying sources of the used parts and simply function to dismantle the scrapped vehicles. Therefore, almost all the relevant enterprises are small and thus can not expect scale merit.
Recently, in order to increase the reuse of used parts produced from the dismantling process of scrapped vehicles, the automobile management law has been amended to greatly expand the kind of used parts allowable for reuse. According to environmental laws relative to the recycle of scrapped vehicles in Europe, all car-makers should collect scrapped vehicles generated from all vehicles including nine-seater or below cars/vans and 3.5 tons or below trucks, which are sold after Jul. 1, 2002, at their own expense, and the vehicles sold before Jul. 1, 2002 should be collected from Jan. 1, 2007.
Under the above-mentioned laws, since all of the car-makers should collect their vehicles at their own expense and also construct separately a dismantling system in their companies to process the collected vehicles in an environment-friendly manner, enormous additional expenses are expected. By the influence of the above laws in Europe, there is a high possibility that the laws relative to scrapped vehicles in Korea will be amended so that the car-makers should collect the scrapped vehicles, which are generated from their sold vehicles, at their own expense. Therefore, in order to rapidly deal with such a change, the car-makers in Korea need to prepare a dismantling plant for processing scrapped vehicles, in which a dismantling system thereof is simplified and automated so as to process a large quantity of scrapped vehicles by stages.
However, in order to collect and dismantle all of the scrapped vehicles generated from their sold vehicles at their expenses, the car-makers should be able to process the same number of scrapped vehicles as the number of sold vehicles. If the car-makers employ a conventional method and system for dismantling the scrapped vehicles, it will cause various troubles.
In other words, the conventional system for dismantling scrapped vehicles performs the dismantling process using various equipments which are two-dimensionally developed on the ground having a desired area. However, since the conventional system has complicated and extensive construction and processes, there are some problems that it takes so much time and cost to dismantle each of the scrapped vehicles and there are many risk factors for accidents during the dismantling process and it is difficult to secure a space for storing the used parts generated in the dismantling process.
To solve the above problems, there has been proposed a method of dismantling scrapped vehicles disclosed in Korean Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2004-246 on Jan. 13, 2004, in which dismantling processes are divided into several stages and then assigned in each story of a multi-story structure or building and the dismantling processes are performed in turn from the uppermost story toward the lowermost story.
In the above-mentioned dismantling method, if the dismantling processes in one story are completed, the scrapped vehicle is transported to the next lower story by an elevator provided at both sides of the building. A process of collecting liquid materials is performed at the uppermost story, and a process of removing explosive parts and collecting parts to be reused, a process of collecting interior/exterior parts and a process of collecting parts of engine, exhausting system and chassis are respectively performed in turn at each of the next lower stories, and finally, a process of collecting remaining parts is performed at the lowermost story.
According to Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2005-280682 published on Oct. 13, 2005, there is disclosed another method and system for dismantling scrapped vehicles, in which equipments for performing each dismantling process from a process of stocking the scrapped vehicles to a final process of compressing a body of the scrapped vehicle are arranged in series on one line, and a transporting rail which a bogie truck for transporting the scrapped vehicle can be moved along is provided on the ground, and a bogie truck returning system is provided to return the bogie truck to an initial position through a pit constructed under the ground and another transporting rail provided in the pit.
In the above mentioned system, the dismantling processes are performed in the order as follows: checking of objective parts to be dismantled; preparation; processing of explosive parts; collecting of liquid materials; dismantling of exterior parts; dismantling of interior parts; dismantling of parts of engine/transmission/exhausting system/chassis; compressing of a body of the scrapped vehicle. After the final compressing process is finished, the empty bogie truck is lifted down in the pit and returned to the initial position through the transporting rail by using the bogie truck returning system. Then, while the bogie truck is lifted up on the ground and moved along the transporting rail on the ground, the dismantling processes are performed repeatedly.
Meanwhile, in the dismantling processes of scrapped vehicles, as described above, there has been proposed a method in which various information for each scrapped vehicle, such as a process starting and ending situation of a main process, a current position, a time required for each process, a completion status of the entire processes, an operator and the like, are collected, and a record of working performance for each operator is also collected, and a working situation can be monitored in real-time, and the collected database is optimized and then provided as useful dismantling data at each car-maker.
A system of dismantling the scrapped vehicle, in which various information is collected by using RFID (Radio Frequency Identification), and a body transporting unit is used instead of the bogie truck, and RFID readers are disposed at main processes such as a preprocess, a process of collecting nonferrous metals, a process of compressing a body of the scrapped vehicle and so on. Each of the RFID readers is connected to a data server through LAN (Local Area Network) so that the information collected by the RFID readers is transmitted through the LAN to the data server.
Herein, each of the RFID readers receives identification information from two cards (tags) in which specific IDs for the operator and the vehicle are input, and the identification information read from the cards by the RFID readers is transmitted to the data server. At this time, each of the RFID readers recognizes work start and end points of corresponding process and transmits them to the data server. The work start point is a point of time when the operator installs the cards at the RFID reader of each process, and the work end point is a point of time when the operator removes the cards from the RFID reader. As the result, the information of vehicle to be dismantled, work start and end time, working time and operation is input and collected at the data server. By this information, the working situation can be monitored in real-time, and a record of working performance for each operator can be also collected.
However, in the system of dismantling scrapped vehicles, as described above, there is a disadvantage that the operator has to directly input a processing situation of the scrapped vehicle to the reader by using the card. Further, only the information such as the work start and end time, the working time and the like can be collected, and it is not possible to monitor whether each process is performed properly or whether a reusing rate arrives at a desired value and to collect useful dismantling information such a weight of part, a collecting rate of the liquid materials and the like.